On 7/12/05, Haukur Þorgeirsson haukurth@hi.is wrote:
I wonder if there is also a problem wherein people are afraid to make short, simple articles defining technical terms, which would cut downdrastically on duplication and allow wider linking, because of the perceived mania for "getting rid of stubs" and "moving definitions to wiktionary".
One solution might be to use links to Wiktionary more than we currently do.
Regards, Haukur
Starting from when I was a small child reading them on the living room floor, I've never fully grasped the reasons why an encyclopedia was not just a superset of the dictionary.
I understand why dictionaries don't have encyclopedic articles in it; they're more narrowly focused, and don't have the space. But why encyclopedias don't also contain a full dictionary is still a mystery to me. Each good article starts with a general definition of the term already.
That said, interwiki links to Wiktionary are a very good thing to have. In the absence of a merged project, I would like to see them used much more. I think a section at the bottom of some articles, with links to definitions of uncommon words used in the article would also be nice.